ABSTRACT
The writings of Lourdes Beneria and Martha Chen trace the advent of the modern informal sector through the dual processes of development and globalization and examine the changes in the nature of work in developing countries. Beneria and Chen shift the discussion to put women's employment and work at the center. And both women believe that it is important to help women workers who do such jobs by providing them intellectual assistance. Such assistance includes the construction of terminology, of theoretical insight, and of empirical evidence to support the struggle to organize via self-representation, improving working conditions. Beneria encountered and exposed scholars to the persistence and expansion of the informal sector through her early work in Latin America and Chen worked with international organizations and with Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) to refine and extend the evidence collection to many other parts of the developing world.
